LIC Offers Its Customers Online Access To Insurance Services

The initiative will open up services such as premium due calendar, online premium payment facilitation, premium history, claim history among other services

The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) on launched its own insurance repository – LIC E-services – which will allow its existing customers to check details of policies, including settlement status, online as well as buy new ones.

The services to registered customers include status details on policies, bonuses, loans and claims. The portal will ensure access to policy-related information as well as payment anytime and anywhere, apart from buying a new policy online, Chairman S.K. Roy told in Mumbai.

LIC’s e-services were inaugurated by T.S. Vijayan, chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA). The event was attended LIC managing directors V.K. Sharma and Usha Sangwan.

LIC said the launch of e-services is part its efforts to become an insurer of choice.

Vijayan, who at one point served as the chief of LIC, recalled the steps taken by the financial powerhouse- when the first IBM computers were installed in early 1980s and the Corporation headquarters was wired to its Santa Cruz back-end offices in 1987.

Calling for a single KYC framework for all financial instruments, Vijayan said the insurance industry will face the real challenge when the entire industry gets to access details from an open KYC architecture.

Sangwan said the corporation began the digitisation drive in 2007, when Vijayan was the chairman, by digitising 4 lakh existing policies.

Roy said LIC has already sold 40,000 policies online during the pilot phase and does not believe that it will eat into the business of its 11 lakh agents.

The nation-wide launch comes after testing the facility at 50 locations, including remote ones.

“I don’t think the online service will any way affect the business of our agents. In fact, they are very enthused about this facility. This should only add to our incremental business and not eat into the agency sales,” Roy said.

He said “during the current fiscal so far, we have sold 15 million new policies out of which 6,000 were the new E-Term policies”.